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‘Segmented Trade’. Merchants, Mercantile Practices and Mercantilism 575

price than its original value). This indicated the usefulness of coining
a currency whose use outside the empire’s borders would be free and
specific to this purpose, making it simply goods, an ‘objectum
commercii’. This is how Maria Theresa of the Hapsburg’s thaler was
born, one of the most important trading currencies, a silver ‘trade
dollar’. From the mid to the late 18th century, it made its way around
the world from the starting point of the Hapsburg Empire and Trieste
to the Ottoman empire, the North African coast, the Persian Gulf via
Suez, India, Asia, the Red Sea and East Africa. It was used in trade
14
and monetary circulation .
Count Johann Fries was Chotek’s ally in this project. From a
patrician family from Mühlhouse, in Swiss Alsace, Fries built his career
on financial services to the Hapsburg court, becoming a first rank
exponent of Vienna’s financial markets. Chotek and Fries had strong
bonds with the Proli group. Fries was assigned responsibility for the
15
thaler’s trading monopoly with the Ottoman Empire . The preferred
trade route was the sea route via Trieste while use of the land routes
was banned although probably with limited success. In these years the
imperial thaler was minted at the Viennese mint, at Günzberg in
Bavaria and Hall in the Tyrol and from 1751 to 1760 around 9 million
coins were minted and a further 17 million from 1761 to 1766. The
thaler did not link Trieste to the Atlantic only for certain of the routes
on which it was transported. In fact, the bulk of these thalers were not
coined with silver from the imperial mines but rather from silver
arriving from international financial and monetary circuits and via the
reminting of coins melted down for this purpose. Many of these came
from the Americas. In this way Trieste became a central linchpin in
global trade, contributing to balancing payments between the various
parts of the world and bringing Ottoman Empire, Asian and Chinese
products westwards . From 1766 to 1769 thaler trading was partly
16
liberalised. In Trieste and Vienna there were thaler deposit
warehouses. Coins had to be accompanied by a ‘passport’, registered
and sealed and then a certificate that export had taken place
obtained . Fries maintained trading control but export rights were
17
assigned to a pool of banks located in Venice, Genoa, Livorno and

14 Sav, Inquisitori, 1265, 14 March 1750. M.M. Fischel, Le Thaler de Marie-Thérèse.
Etude de Sociologie et d’Histoire èconomique, Marchal, Dijon, 1912; A.E. Tschogl, Maria
Theresa‘s Thaler: a case of international money, «Eastern Economic Journal», 27/4
(2001), pp. 443-461; P.G.M. Dickson, 1740-1780, vol. I, Society and Government, Claren-
don Press, Oxford, 1987.
15 P.G.M. Dikson, Finance and Government under Maria Theresia cit., pp. 172-178.
16 M.M. Fischel, Le Thaler de Marie-Thérèse cit, pp. 5-6, 69-70 and 200.
17 Sat, Intendenza, 585, 31 March e 19 April 1769.

n.44 Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XV - Dicembre 2018
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)